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So: Volkov had arrived from Washington and there were three others with him. Step was aware of a Russian intelligence operation based in San Diego, after the spies had been chased out of the consulate in San Francisco. He’d been asked a half-dozen times to provide minor services to agents going through the LA area—cash, anonymous car rides, on one occasion a pistol, and on another, referral to a doctor who wouldn’t ask too many questions and would take payment in cash.
The medical problem had been serious but basically routine—nothing like a wound—but Americans were insured up to their necks, and most doctors didn’t deal in cash. But a few did, and Step knew two of them.
The limo dropped Stepoutside a parking structure in Santa Monica, where he’d left his car, and he drove back to his guesthouse from there. The guesthouse was also in the Beverly Hills Flats, a half mile from the main house.
Volkov always made him anxious. But he could, in the end,handle Volkov, he thought, and if he couldn’t, Victoria certainly could. He was more worried about the mystery of the two crazy chicks and the fat guy.
Though Volkov was bad, it was him and three other men. He, Step, had more men than that and if they weren’t exactly GRU quality, they were good enough. With the mystery group, he didn’t know what he was dealing with. Getting the entire FBI on his ass, or some other unknown American agency with shooters, would be a problem of a completely different order, because he didn’t have more men than the FBI.
He wondered, briefly, what would happen if he got a couple of boys, and they walked through the front door of the guesthouse and killed Volkov and the other three, right there, bam-bam-bam, and then denied ever seeing him? He thought about it, decided it probably wouldn’t work. Wouldn’t for sure if Volkov had already made a call from the house. But the concept was attractive. Maybe some other time, some other place, after he built an ironclad alibi. Talk first.
Volkov was amodern-day remnant of the old Soviet Union, a hulking, round-shouldered thug with a bullet head and heavy black eyebrows, and a mouth that naturally turned down in a scowl. He was sitting in the diminutive living room with a glass of iced tea. He wore a dark suit over a black tee-shirt, with poorly polished, blunt-tipped black shoes that looked like weapons, designed to kick someone to death. None of his three companions looked like him, but they had a GRU family resemblance, a built-in bull-necked glower, that any Russian civilian would have recognized and carefully walked around. Two of them had the kind ofdark, well-trimmed beards that looked almost like velvet, or fur. One of them had a glass of iced tea, two had glasses of water.
“Ah, Arseny Denisevich, my old friend,” Volkov said when Step walked through the kitchen and into the living room. “You have problems.”
“Maybe I have problems,” Step said, speaking in Russian. “And maybe you have problems. The newspapers here say you’re about to invade Ukraine. I believe you might want to use trains to move your men and material to the front.”
“That would be classified as secret,” Volkov said. “But, as speculation, I would speculate that you might be correct. You were supposed to handle that potential problem.”
Step sank into an easy chair and Victoria handed him a glass of tea, heavy with sugar. “We’re merchants. We have to take protective steps to ensure the safety of our merchandise, so we have—wedidhave—the capabilities necessary to do that. We were happy to help the motherland if we could,” he said piously. “But in the last few days...”
He told the visitors about the elimination of three of the train ransomware creators. He added that the FBI had been all over the men who had done the job and had killed two of them and arrested the third, and that when he sent two more men to take out a fourth train hacker, one of his men had been shot, and the other was in the federal lockup.
Volkov’s forehead wrinkled: “How reliable are the men held by the Americans?”
“Very. They know we will get them out as soon as we can. Two were shot and are hospitalized and we are looking at removing them from the hospitals when they are recovered enough to travel,but before they are taken to a prison. We can do that. The other is in a federal lockup, but he did nothing aggressive and we think he will be allowed bail. If he is, we will remove him from the U.S. and return him to Serbia, where he won’t be found.”
“Why is this happening now?” Volkov asked. “Because of Ukraine?”
“I don’t know. There’s something going on that we don’t know about and that we’ve never experienced before. I think there’s an intelligence operation underway, because these people know cops, but they’re not cops, they’re shooters.”
“CIA,” Volkov said. “Maybe DIA. They both have shooters and the FBI wouldn’t touch them.”
“They don’t act like CIA. One of the girls looks and acts like a teenager, all tattooed and seemingly not too intelligent. I’ve been told that she’s a psycho. Threatened to kill another woman while they were sitting at a café table; flashed a pocket gun. They claim to have run a ransomware attack on a hospital in Georgia, and that has checked out. They actually stole computer components from one of my warehouses.”
“Mmm.”
“So... my operation may be infected,” Step said. “I’m clean, so far, nobody’s come at me. This house is clean, I’m not so sure about the main house. I’m shutting down my export operation for now, until I can find out what is going on. What can I do to help you?”
“You can tell us everything you know. We may still need your help, but we will direct the operations against these people. The train hacking can’t happen again, not now. He himself...” He pointed at the ceiling, meaning Vladimir Putin, “is watching.”
“I understand,” Step said. “And you must understand my capabilities have been reduced. But I will do what I can. On my honor.”
Twenty-One
Nowak was gone.
Big decisions were being made in Washington and she wanted to be there, both to contribute and to be seen. She ignored a perfectly good shuttle and was picked up by a limo at the front door and disappeared toward LAX. All the way down to the ground floor, in the elevator, she had urged them to gather what they could of Ordinary People and get them working on a train hack.
Before leaving, Nowak had made calls to somebody in Washington, who had made calls to the SkyPort, and the hotel provided them with two suites to be used as communal workrooms, and a block of ten additional rooms that would become available during the day, all on the same floor, no questions asked.
“We’re gonna need space,” Baxter said. “If we can get these guys in here... I hope Able hasn’t gone to Vegas...”
“Vegas is what, five, six hours from here by car?” Cartwright said. “Shouldn’t be a problem. But what do we tell them?”
Baxter looked at Letty, then back at Cartwright. “I’m thinking... we really can’t tell them the truth. Because of the SlapBack hack. Hackers are basically about moving information, and any information they have will get out. If SlapBack found out the NSA was behind their hack, there’d be a shitstorm.”
Letty: “You’re right. But: these people are big brains. We’ll probably not fool them forever, but as long as they don’t know where we’re located in the government...”
